The second in a series of three sermons given by Dr. Ralph Blair at the 2011 Preaching Festival held in Ocean Grove, N.J.
Jesus said:
How fortunate are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
A New Yorker cartoon depicts a sadsack newly arrived at the Pearly Gates. St. Peter is inspecting the computer screen: “You say ‘meek,’ but your records say ‘passive-aggressive.’”
The meaning of meekness gets misunderstood. Might the meek be mere milquetoasts? Or wussies? Is so-called “meekness” just a strategy for self-protection? Is it but a pout – a calculated scheme to get one’s way? Some timidity may intend to intimidate. Or, she may be only a nervous Nelly. But all of these are the damned absence of the meekness of the fortunate.
Jesus, himself, models the meekness of which he speaks. As Paul wrote about him to Philippians, Christ did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.” (Phil 2:6-7) In his entrance into Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday, he’s described as gentle, meek, and astride, not a great horse like a triumphant general, but a young donkey. (Matt 21:5) And hadn’t he invited the weary with these welcoming words: “Come to me. I’ll give you rest. Be yoked with me. Learn from me, for I’m gentle, humble – meek – and you’ll find rest with me, for my yoke eases your burden and lightens the load.” (Matt 11:28-30) He stoops down to where we are.
We know from the history of world religions and superstitions as well as from our own personal histories that rules, rituals and all the other requirements of religion, legalism and so-called spiritualities can be intolerably entrapping and even deadly. Jesus, too, knew that. Those who oppressed him were faultfinding rulers of religion who plotted to kill him because he saw right through them. He preached against their piling on the people the backbreaking burdens that they, themselves, didn’t lift a damned finger to help carry. (Matt 23:4) Peter and Paul picked up on this, as we see in Peter’s address at the Jerusalem Counsel (Acts 15:10) and in Paul’s letters. (e.g., Romans 7:10, 24-25). Instead of the backbreaking “harness of the law” under which Peter said neither they nor their forebears were ever able to cope, Jesus invites us to be yoked with him. Whatever row we have to hoe, it’ll go so much easier with him pulling along at our side. Why, his yoke amounts to massage for tired necks and shoulders!
Jesus says that the meek will inherit the earth. How’s that? Well, aren’t our earthly cares what most of us, most of the time worry about? We worry here and now about our future here and then. What if this happens! What if that happens! Our worldly worries, all our “what ifs”, stretch out in fantasy in front of us, ad infinitum and ad nauseum.
Yet Jesus said: Don’t worry about any of these things in your everyday world – what you’ll eat, what you’ll wear, “what-if” this, “what-if” that. He took note that, “all such worry is what preoccupies the pagans!” So, he asked them: “Don’t you realize that your heavenly Father is aware of all your needs?” That word should be sufficient for the wise. So, he taught: “Seek, first, God’s reign, God’s righteousness. And, with that, God will give you all you’ll ever need.” (Matt 6)
Without receiving a good reason to stop worrying, we can’t stop worrying. So Jesus gives the very best reason to stop worrying. Doesn’t what he says make sense? We can afford to stop worrying because God is clearly already aware of whatever we need and He’ll give us what, in His unfathomable wisdom and in His unquestionable love, He knows we need. But how do we know that He will? We know that He will because, for us in our most dire need, He already went to the cross. With such assurance of His love, we can afford to stop worrying. Assured of this, do we really have to insist on everything’s going our way? Must we have every “if-only” that we can dream up on our own and must we escape every “what-if” we can fantasize? Are we unfathomably wise? Are we unquestionably loving?
So, when yoked with Jesus, your stressed spirit is unstressed daily as you move forward with him at your side. How? His yoke massages your stress.
And if the righteous reign of God is already yours as one who’s poor in spirit, is it not certain that whatever “all else” you need from Him is yours as well?
Going way beyond the old hope of a promised land, Jesus promises the whole Earth – a whole New World, the fully redeemed cosmic realm under God’s sovereign reign.
Are you mourning over your own sin? Joy in salvation from sin and death. Do you hurt because others have sinned against you? Joy in salvation from sin and death. Your debt has been paid and so has theirs – paid at the cross. Be the humble and unperturbed meek, grateful because the redeemed have no need to posture, the redeemed have no need to resent or retaliate. The redeemed have reason to rejoice in the Savior. Be yokefellow with him who gave up equality with God to be yoked with you. And yoked with him, yoke with the others for whom, also, he gave up equality with God. Take things as they come, day by day, because you realize who’s by your side through it all. That’s your Creator by your side. That’s your Savior in that yoke with you. And he’s also their Creator and Savior and Lord. With Him, His whole New World is yours together with them. That’s how and why we can be meek. We’re yoked with Jesus, who came to be yoked with us through all the hell we’ll never have to face and on into a whole new world. Taking part in his yoke destroys our foolish pride and gives us a tender and humble heart of meek mirth. So, we sing in Doxology: “All ye who are of tender heart, forgiving others take your part. Sing his praises, Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!”
And Jesus said further:
How fortunate are those who keep on hungering and thirsting for righteousness, longing for what’s right. For God will fill them up!
The Psalmist sings: “As the deer thirsts for streams of water, so my soul thirsts for God.” (Ps 42:1) And again: “The Lord satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things.” (Ps 107:9)
But as we hear these ancient words, let’s not fool ourselves. We, here and now, have no sense of what real thirst feels like. We have no experience of what it’s like to be really hungry – as ancient people knew hunger and thirst and as Third World and Fourth World people know hunger and thirst today.
When we’ve felt thirsty, that’s likely never been real thirst. We were usually within a few steps of tap water if not an upscale designer bottle of chilled spring water flown in from Fiji or Finland. When we say: “I’m starved!” we’re really deluding ourselves. We’re, no doubt within a few hours of our latest meal and but a few minutes away from our next meal.
But people of Bible days in the ancient and arid Mid-East knew the pangs, fatigue, muscle atrophy – and worse – of utter hunger. And they knew the pains of cramping and throbbing headaches – and worse – of severe dehydration. Without relief, they died from hunger within weeks. Without relief, they died from thirst within days.
So, when Jesus speaks of the good fortune of those who “hunger and thirst after righteousness”, we must stretch to hear what was originally heard. If we don’t, we’ll mistake the good fortune’s being linked to tidbits of take-it-or-leave-it “spirituality” snacks. Hooked on junk food self-righteousness, we can hardly hunger for a righteousness that sticks-to-the-ribs. (Matt 5:20)
What Jesus was talking about was the real urgency of those who know that they’re in desperate need of the very basics for life itself – that their need is a matter of life or death. This is the urgency with which the fortunate who would be filled pursue the discipleship of trusting and obeying the Lord. This is their awareness of their own inabilities and of their utter dependency on God alone. And, of course, serious hunger and thirst for righteousness of the God by whom and in whose image they were created and in whose Son they are redeemed, will, indeed, be fully satisfied. No wonder hungering and thirsting for Him and His righteousness is so fulfilling, so fortunate!
Do we have such a driving hunger and thirst for His righteousness, for an increasing intimacy with Him? (II Cor 13:14)
And Jesus said further:
How fortunate are the merciful, for they will be shown God’s mercy.
Before he was gunned down in a Manhattan hotel in 1990, Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the Jewish Defense League, labeled by the FBI as a “right-wing terrorist group”, callously claimed that, “Mercy has its place, as do cruelty and revenge.” He’s had lots of company for centuries. Ravenous appetites for revenge and cruelty come quite easily to those who are fixated on the wrongs done to them rather than focused on wrongs they do to others.
But, revenge and cruelty cannot be the right responses of a disciple of Christ! Why? It’s because those who receive the utmost in mercy from the utterly Holy God cannot but seek, in humble gratitude, to be merciful to all others. Mercy isn’t owed. Mercy isn’t deserved. Mercy is gifted to those who deserve punishment – even death. That’s why we who’ve received the mercy of the Christ of the cross can pass such mercy along, even to enemies.
If we refuse to do good for others after we’ve received such good done for us, how much do we really comprehend Christ’s good done for us? If God turned His back on Himself in His Son, so as never to turn His back on us – how can we turn our back on others, even if they’ve turned their back on us?
No wonder the merciful are so fortunate! Their showing mercy shows that they know what it is to receive the mercy shown to them. Their mercy
springs from the mercy shown. It’s the very mercy that’s been shown them.
Bible scholars point out that, in the Greek Old Testament, as over against non-biblical Greek, “to have mercy” – hilaskomai – is “quite without pagan parallel”. (Nigel Turner) The central idea in biblical “mercy” is forgiveness. Mercy was no longer a superficial pacifying of pagan gods by the manipulating magic of the masses. It was no longer a pagan priest’s putting deities in debt. Biblical mercy and forgiveness was an entirely gracious act of God alone. And, moving into the New Testament, that gracious act of God’s mercy is historically lived to death on Calvary’s cross.
So, we disciples of Christ can afford to turn from fixating on wrong done to us by refocusing on wrong that we do to others and on the unspeakable wrong we’ve done to God who, in Christ, took our sin’s punishment into himself and suffered and died that we might not only survive but thrive. We fix our eyes on the Crucified and see in him our only salvation.
As in all the Beatitudes, Jesus is speaking to his disciples – those who, in their good sense of spiritual poverty, depend utterly on God alone and therein have citizenship in God’s realm. Jesus is speaking to those who, in mourning over wrongdoing they and others do, turn to God and are therein comforted. And he’s speaking to those who, in deep longing for a more faithful relationship with God, undisturbed by disobedience and fueled by faithfulness, are having their longings addressed and satisfied.
If we’re grateful for having received mercy, we’d be eager to show mercy. If we don’t know what it is to receive mercy, we’ll not likely show mercy. But some who’ve been shown mercy refuse to show mercy. Jesus told a parable about such a man. He’d been forgiven a huge debt. But he then refused to forgive a little debt another owed him. Jesus said his parable was about God’s realm, and warned that, in view of God’s great mercy shown to us, it would be an outrageous wrong for us to refuse to show mercy to others. (Matt 18:21ff) Since the Beatitude is addressed to Christ’s disciples, our readiness, as his disciples, to pass this mercy on to others comes from our knowing that, already, we’ve received God’s mercy. The Beatitude’s reassuring promise is that, I confirm my reception of God’s mercy when I, myself, show mercy. How fortunate are the merciful!
Jesus said further:
How fortunate are the pure and single-hearted, for they’ll see God!
The pure in heart are those who love and serve the Lord whole-heartedly. Theirs is a single-hearted devotion, a single-minded dedication to God.
In Hebrew thought, the heart represented one’s self, one’s life, one’s mind, one’s very person – one’s center. To be pure in heart, then, is to be, in the very heart of one’s whole being, a life of integrity, a life that’s fully integrated, a life that’s all of a piece, with no reservations, no stingy stewardship, no competing loyalties, no idols at all, no other “gods” period.
The heart is, as Jesus knew it, the center out of which we think and speak, intend and act. So, it follows that the pure in heart are those who love and serve God with all they’ve got. They love God with all they are and all they have and in all they do – the essence of the first Commandment. And if so, they love their neighbors as they love themselves, as Jesus summarized the Law of God. (Mark 12:29f) In their discipleship, they have no ultimate concern but God’s will. They have no competing commitments, no conflicting focus, no compartmentalization of their “Christian” identity and “other” identities. It’s to God’s will alone that they give their undivided attention. God’s priorities are their priorities. They long to be conformed to the image of Christ.
Amy Carmichael served as a missionary in India for over half a century. She never took a furlough. One day she received a letter asking what missionary life was like. Her no-nonsense reply was this: “It’s simply a chance to die.” Here’s something else she wrote: “Blessed are the single-hearted, for they shall enjoy much peace. If you refuse to be hurried and pressed, if you stay your soul on God, nothing can keep you from that clearness of spirit that is life and peace.” She was one of the fortunate – a Christian disciple of single-hearted devotion and delight.
Looking so diligently, so faithfully, to God and to God alone, is it strange that the pure in heart see Him? The writer to Hebrews refers to Moses’ moving forward in faith with his “eye on the One no eye can see”. (Heb 11:27, The Message) And in John’s words: one day, there’ll be a great Homecoming when the pure in heart “shall see Him even as He is”, for they themselves, John says, “will be like Him.” (I John 3:2) After all, these who now live in purity of heart are those whose hearts have been made pure by God in Christ. As we read in the Lord’s Revelation to John on the island of Patmos, they are the cleansed and clean, they have “washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” (Rev 7:14)
And now, humbly knowing who they are and whose they are, hungry and thirsty for more of his righteousness and passing along to others the mercy shown to them – how fortunate they are, the appropriately prioritized, whose Privilege is Christ, himself.
Amen.
(The second sermon The Privilege of the Appropriately Prioritized is available here.)